A senior White House official warns the country could remain vulnerable to COVID-19 unless Congress approves more funding for tests and vaccines — just as many Americans are hoping the pandemic will end soon, and are showing they will are no longer as concerned about the virus as they have been for the past few months.
dr Ashish Jha, who was recently appointed the White House coronavirus response coordinator, told the Associated Press on Thursday that Americans’ immunity to the virus, whether from vaccines or natural infections, is waning.
This comes as the federal government fears funding for Covid-related programs will soon run out, severely limiting Americans’ access to vaccines, tests and treatments. This would make the population “vulnerable” to the virus in the future, explains Jha.
These warnings come as fewer and fewer Americans are worried about the virus, and many are poised to exit the virus and return to normal life, according to a recent Gallup poll. Less than a third of those surveyed said they were still worried about Covid.
However, case numbers in America are trending higher, up to 90,000 a day for the first time since late February, up 37 percent over the past week. But the number of deaths is rising, suggesting the milder nature of recent Covid strains, with the number of deaths falling by 30 per cent to 386 a day over the past week.
“As we get into the fall, we’re all going to be a lot more vulnerable to a virus that has a lot more immune evasion than we have today and certainly than we did six months ago,” Jha told the AP.
“It makes many of us vulnerable.”
dr Ashish Jha (pictured), White House Covid response coordinator, warns Americans could soon be vulnerable to the pandemic unless more funds are approved
Jha is pushing for lawmakers to authorize more funding for the federal government for Covid mitigation measures, an issue that has been contentious in recent weeks as some look to spend the money elsewhere.
Biden had pushed for the funds to be part of a spending package that included aid to Ukraine but was forced to withdraw for fear that disagreements for that section would halt the entire bill.
Federal officials say the funding will be enough to get America into the fall while allowing the country to continue ordering Covid vaccines. There has been speculation that if funding is not approved, the US will no longer be able to offer the vaccines to all Americans, only to high-risk groups.
Jha worries that any moment funding is delayed will push the US down the pecking order for vaccine orders, as other countries place orders for more vaccines in the future, and will be given priority as more vaccines come from leaders like Pfizer and Moderna are made.
“I would say we really did hit that deadline and waiting much longer just puts us further behind,” added Jha.
“If we’re willing to stand at the back of the line and get our vaccines in the spring, we’ve got plenty of time. But then we missed the whole fall and winter. That’s not an acceptable outcome, I don’t think, for the American people.’
However, whether Americans want more Covid vaccinations at all is still up for debate. The rollout of the COVID-19 boosters was slow when they first became available in the fall of 2021, as older Americas didn’t flock to get the shots the federal government expected.
Even when the fourth dose of vaccine for Americans 50 and older was approved earlier this year, there was little change in the daily vaccines.
A Gallup poll released Wednesday found just 31 percent of Americans say they are either “somewhat concerned” or “very concerned” about contracting COVID-19, a three percent drop from the version of the poll published in March was carried out in February. Within that group, 17 percent of Americans said they were still “very concerned” about Covid, a five percent drop.
The poll signals the changing state of the virus as America approaches the summer months. In recent years, the warm weather months have been associated with large, devastating virus outbreaks.
The survey was conducted in mid-April, as the trend of declining cases that had been in place for nearly three months to this point, following the peak of the winter Omicron surge in mid-January, began to reverse.
Respondents were asked about their feelings about the pandemic, the virus, and what kind of personal mitigation strategies they use — or ignore — in their daily lives.
The study also found that 64 percent of Americans believed the pandemic was “getting better.” At the time of the survey, cases had just fallen below 30,000 per day, one of the lowest points since the pandemic began in March 2020.
Around 21 percent of Americans said they think the situation is about the same, and only 12 percent think it’s getting worse.
The last time this small crowd of Americans believed the situation was getting worse was in the summer of 2021, when cases hit rock bottom just before the Delta variant blew up.
These good feelings have also led to some behavioral changes. Just 17 percent of Americans said they are still in social distancing, the pandemic’s lowest point so far.
Just under a third of Americans said they avoided large crowds, a fifth said they avoided public places, and just 15 percent avoided small gatherings.
Those numbers are also all pandemic lows, Gallup reports.
The shifting feelings about Covid are a positive sign for the future, but also come as officials warn more pandemic-related threats are forming around the world.
The prevalence of the new Covid strain BA 2.12.1 – the most contagious version of the virus being sequenced by US health officials – continues to rise, officials report.
The strain, first discovered in New York last month, now accounts for 42.6 percent of the sequenced Covid cases in America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Tuesday. It’s an increase from the 33 percent of cases that made up the strain the previous week.
This newly discovered version of the virus is a subline of the BA.2 “Stealth” variant, which remains the dominant strain, accounting for 56 percent of cases. The new variety is believed to have a growth advantage of about 27 percent over its predecessor and will likely take over as the nation’s dominant variety by the end of the month.
Every single Covid case sequenced by the CDC falls under the Omicron variant umbrella, with the Delta variant now being completely wiped out by its successor.
The BA.1 strain of the virus, which caused record-breaking outbreaks worldwide over the winter, now accounts for just 0.6 percent of cases in the US as its subvariant has almost completely overtaken it.
While the BA 2.12.1 strain has taken some time to overtake the stealth variant as the dominant strain nationwide, it already accounts for two out of three cases in the New York and New Jersey area of the United States, the CDC reports.
It is the only region of the country where the tribe is dominant. It’s also the part of the country where officials first discovered this new strain in the United States
The new strain accounts for nearly half of the cases, 48 percent, in the mid-Atlantic region of Virginia, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, according to the CDC.
It also accounts for over 40 percent of cases in New England and the deep southern regions of America.
Like previous strains, this version of the virus appears to be spreading across the country from east to west, with prevalence decreasing in regions further west of the country.
Strain BA 2.12.1 (red) now accounts for 43% of sequenced COVID-19 cases in the US, up from 33% the week before. The BA.2 “Stealth” variant (pink) remains dominant, accounting for 56% of cases
BA 2.12.1 (red) accounts for two out of three cases in the New York and New Jersey area, the CDC reports. In all other regions, the “Stealth” variant (pink) still dominates.
Newer versions of Omicron may also be on their way to America.
There is growing concern about the BA.4 and BA.5 strains of the virus now gaining a foothold in South Africa and causing a further surge in the nation. The country was also the first to suffer from the original release of Omicron in late November.
Last month, the World Health Organization announced it was officially tracking the two strains of the virus as potential concerns.
A pre-print study from South Africa also found that the two variants may have the ability to evade immunity to the virus caused by previous infection.
That could be a major concern for officials, as the massive spread of omicron during the winter months — which gives a large segment of Americans immunity to the virus — will no longer protect people going forward, opening the door for another big surge.
These new threats have the White House concerned that America could face dark autumn and winter months in the second half of 2022.
A senior Biden administration official told CNN that the White House currently expects around 100 million infections of the virus over the coming fall and winter months — a time of year that has set new case records in both years of the pandemic.
For comparison, around 40 million Covid cases were reported in America from September 1 to February 28, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. While that’s likely a gross undercount given the highly infectious but mild nature of the Omicron variant, it means the White House believes case numbers could reach even more heights this year compared to last year